Lying

Hi. For this question you can assume we're gone through the program and have fully implemented TSG as prescribed.

My eight year old daughter is lying a lot. I know you talk about lying with your childhood experiences, but I'm curious how you handle it in action. My particular question is about how to give consequences when you're only 95% sure it's lying. Or, maybe it's better to say that I'm really confident, but should I give a consequence if there's no smoking gun and it's more just my best judgement? It's even hard to give examples, but it's almost always about trying to get out of getting in trouble for something. She has a stronger aversion than most to taking responsibility for wrongdoing. "I didn't know my brother was trying to get my attention." "I just bumped that button on accident." "I didn't hear you." "I'm not sure how [blank] happened." "I didn't know those were his." In a small amount of these instances she may be telling the truth, but how do you handle situations like that where you're pretty sure it's lying but you're not 100%?

I've said to her a bunch of times, "I may never know whether you're telling the truth about this, but….." and then I'll either share my experience with lying myself or share some biblical teaching or an anecdote or I'll address the purpose of the lie and tell her, assuming that she is telling the truth, that she'll still be tempted throughout her life to lie about such and such a thing (to get money/things, look good, get forbidden things, avoid consequences, etc.) and how to think about that and what to search her heart for. Long story short, I'll do some teaching but I won't give a consequence.

What is your advice?

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